Bill McKibben pushes Obama on pipeline

On Sept. 21, the environmental organization 350.org will convene a “day of action” around the country to, among other things, protest Keystone XL and the group’s founder, Bill McKibben, is speaking out about the need for President Obama to stop the proposed pipeline.

“The president said this summer that if Keystone would significantly increase carbon emissions then he would block it,” McKibben told POLITICO. “If he follows that standard in good faith, he can’t support the pipeline. The science and economics of it are completely clear. If he does what he says he’ll do, he won’t approve it. And if he doesn’t approve it, it’ll be a good deal. It’ll be the first time a world leader said a major project would not happen because of climate change. … If he does approve it, then I’m afraid, on this issue, it’ll be clear he talks small action.”

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McKibben says he’s frustrated that climate change doesn’t get more attention in Washington — “Climate change is the biggest thing, by far, happening in the world on any given day, but on any given day, it’s unlikely to be the biggest thing happening” — but says “hopefully we can build enough of a movement to get done what needs to get done — but it’s not an easy task.”

McKibben is coming out with a new book, “Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist,” which chronicles his life as an environmental activist and scholar (McKibben was arrested outside the White House in 2011 for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline). He says the movement is now both “leaderless and leaderfull.”

“For me, it’s been fun to watch the movement and to realize that it doesn’t need ‘leader-leaders’; we’re not in an age like the age of Dr. Martin Luther King or something. The climate change movement had some experience with having a really well-known and charismatic leader in Al Gore. And, for my money, he’s a wonderful prophet. He was way ahead of politicians in figuring out what the most important issues are and work hard on them and deserved every bit of his Nobel Peace Prize. But having one leader like that made it easy for the opposition to go and just pour millions of dollars into ridiculoing him.” McKibben says the movement is now made up of “sprawling, but connected” leaders.

Even if Obama does block the pipeline, McKibben says history will still judge the president — and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — poorly for the failure of the 2009 United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen.

“Fifty years from now, when historians look back on our time, I predict few of them will remember or care about how things went in Libya or Syria or whatever. But I predict they will be incredibly curious to learn how the world responded to the first powerful evidence of climate change and so far in the Obama administration and really for Hillary Clinton as secretary of State during that period, it’s been a very poor record.”